At this point the task is to install a new high efficiency direct vent water heater.
Though I do need to pour a few cubic feet of concrete first for the water heater to sit on. A structural engineer signed off on the design, which will entail epoxying rebar into the existing footing etc.

But before I commit to the water heaters final location location, I want to rough in the water heater so I'll no exactly where to pour the concrete.....

I can understand that!
The wife would never hear of using anything but copper
And as she has removed over 75 cubic yards of dirt from the basement in 5 gallon buckets she will get the copper

I'm an electronics technician/engineer. I do a tremendous amount of electrical soldering by hand, mostly surface mount stuff. So I'm really enjoying sweating the larger stuff, it is like magic for me.

Click to expand...

I hear ya there. I much prefer sweating pipes to electrical soldering. I still sweat anything that will be seen using the old school brass fittings (those suckers take a LOT of heat). The old fittings go well with my hold house, looks original. I then stubbed copper into the basement and transferred everything to pex. I like it for the freezing. The stuff expands 3x it's size before bursting so for my plumbing running in the basement and crawl space, it was a no brainer.

I passed my rebar inspection on Friday and just finished pouring the 1/2 circle for my water heater support.

The first photo is of my Hitachi SDS hammer drill with several bits. For the 3/4" holes I started with a 1/2" bit followed by the 3/4". I could have used just the 3/4" bit, but there was a chance I would hit some internal rebar, I figured better to ruin an old 1/2" bit then the new 3/4".

After drilling, I used a wire brush with a home made extension to clear the holes out. I also blew out the holes with compressed air. Then using an injection gun with a long nozzle I injected Epcon 6 ceramic epoxy in to the holes. Work fast on this, the set time is less than ten minutes. Also shown is a support I made to hold the rebar in the proper place while drying.

There is a heating and cooling duct that terminates against the wall. I would like to run my copper pipe up in the floor joists about 18" away from the outside wall. But there is a circular duct in the bay. Not sure how best to avoid it. I've attached a photo, hopefully that will help some.
Thanks